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We knew he was a fighter to have survived his condition, then surgery, but to endure labor and delivery at his age was a miracle. Through tears of joy and sadness came the faint words “Baptize him.” Karen held him in her arms as I poured the water on his forehead, baptizing him in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
    The nurses wrapped him in a baby blanket and left us alone. There was nothing they could do, so they let us spend a lifetime with him, his lifetime.
    For the next two hours, Karen and I held Gabriel, took pictures of him and us, and told him how much we loved him over and over and over again. I never took my eyes offof him—I was afraid I would forget what he looked like, so I wanted to engrave his face in my memory forever. We sang to him, prayed to God, and as his heart, which we could see beating in his tiny chest, began to slow down, we thanked him for fighting the good fight. We thanked God for giving us those moments to meet him, hold him, love him, and pray with him. When his brave little heart stopped beating, for a moment ours did too.
    It wasn’t until after the funeral that I began to deal with the reality of life after Gabriel. More than any other emotion, I felt betrayed, by God. You see, after many years of faith not being an important part of my life, the previous two years had been a time of spiritual renewal for Karen and me. When I was elected to the Senate, we moved our family to Northern Virginia and attended a church where the pastor, Fr. Jerome Fasano, was different from the “meat and potatoes” priests we were used to. He lit a fire in us at the very same time we encountered another great man of God, the chaplain of the US Senate, Lloyd John Ogilvie. My faith went from something I did on Sunday to being at the heart of my life both at home and at work.
    I rededicated myself to my family, who had played second fiddle to my run for the Senate, and found a passion for the most vulnerable in public policy. I put political considerations aside and weighed in on the most controversial issue of the day, abortion, when I led the fight on the floor of the Senate to ban partial-birth abortion.
    After chasing my desires, I began to pursue God’s will—and now this was His response? I recalled a quote from Saint Teresa of Avila, who, after experiencing numerous trials, complained to Jesus. He responded, “Teresa, that’s how I treat my friends.”
    Teresa responded, “No wonder you have so few friends.”
    “Ask for the gift of understanding.” These were the words of Chaplain Ogilvie that I held on to during this time. “Please, Lord, just make sense of all this,” was my constant plea. He did not disappoint.
    In time, I was able to see God’s love through the pain. Now, as I reflect on the night that encompassed Gabriel’s life, I am comforted that in that short life my son knew only love. How many can say that? God’s gift of faith reassures me further with the belief that Gabriel is now with our Father in heaven. The thoughts of a life knowing only love and an eternity nestled in our Lord’s bosom lifted the weight of grief over time. It also made me realize my most important role as a father is to shepherd my children to our Father in heaven, because, in the end, all that really matters is the end.
    This realization helped me trust that He is a loving and just God, who loves my son even more than I do, but I still missed Gabriel, missed holding him, caring for him, and watching him become an honorable man. I couldn’t see that God was at work, primarily through Karen, to lift Gabriel up to touch, heal, and even open the eyes of those who would not see.
    Gabriel’s life is chronicled in Karen’s book Letters to Gabriel , as well as in the media reports and interviews that followed its publication. The book was published in 1997, but there isn’t a month that goes by when someone doesn’t come up to me to thank us for writing the book and telling our